Case Study: a’ Design Award &amp; Competition

In Order to Create The Most Value For Participants, a’ Design Award and Competition Had to Create Several Tools and Services That Could Serve to Increase The Value For Participants

Design League Platform : The first innovation was development of a very unique system and process management suite. The Design League Platform optimizes internal competition processes to make it easy and efficient to manage the competition. This allows a reduction in the organization costs, and therefore the ability for A’ Design Award &amp; Competition not to have further fees for winners. Design League Platform is powerful and has been used not only for making competitions or awards but also books or any other material that requires open collaboration. Learn more at : http://www.designleague.netIDNN &amp; DXGN Networks : These are two separate content syndication networks that automatically publish all winner works. They have been especially developed to provide further visibility for award winners; i.e. when a prospective customers searches for an architect, artist or designer, these platforms allow award winners to be found and displayed. This creates an added value for award winners as it allows them to be found by prospective clients when searched for or when visitors browse the magazines that are part of the IDNN and DXGN Networks. See a live example: http://www.idnn.orgDesigner Rankings : There have been many design ranking schemes, however for the first time, A’ Design Award &amp; Competition has ranked not brands, but rather the designers who have won awards for several brands. The designer rankings platform allows designers to show their prestige status, and helps to establish a quality indication for the designer. It also creates added value for winners as it helps the designers to be found easier when searched for or by surprise when visitors browse the rankings. Learn more at: http://www.designerrankings.comWorld Design Rankings : For the first time in history, A’ Design Award &amp; Competition published the World Design Rankings representing achievements within all arts, design and architecture fields. The World Design Rankings provides a great publicity value and prestige to award winners who are shown as winners within their countries. Each year, WDR is updated with the new country rankings for design and gets great attendance from the media due to the viral nature of the news. This provides a great value to participants in terms of publicity and prestige. Learn more at: http://www.worlddesignrankings.comProof of Creation : For the first time, A’ Design Award &amp; Competition provides designers an opportunity to have a proof of design creation document to be made, and saved at a neutral third-party, marked officially with the government through a shipping stamp. This is a free service offered for all award participants and could potentially help designers to prove that they had the particular design in their hands at a given time and location, which could potentially be useful if someone accuses you of getting too much inspired. This is a further value for participants who do not have the funds to afford patent registrations as it is better than nothing. Learn more at: http://www.designcreation.orgPreliminary Checking Service : A’ Design Award &amp; Competition filters all submitted entries free of charge by a preliminary jury. Each submission is then provided a preliminary score. The preliminary score indicates the potential chances of winning based on prior experience, submission quality and design quality. If a design has a high score, preliminary jury will suggest to either proceed with nomination or to update the design before nomination, if a design has low score, preliminary jury will suggest not to nominate the design. This helps the real Jury Panel to save time, and makes the voting experience more pleasurable as the nominations become more qualified. This also allows prospective competition participants to understand the potential of their works without making any payments for nomination. This is a further value for participants since it provides free consultancy and professional insights regarding the design submissions. Learn more at : https://www.adesignaward.com/preliminary-checks.htmlSubmission Optimization : It has been observed through research over 5000 submissions that the votes of the jury members are positively biased towards entries that have a very good and clear visual communication and project presentation. In most awards, this undeniable bias results in good, but not well represented designs to lose their chances of winning. Therefore, to avoid and reduce the positive presentation bias when evaluating entries, a custom software was build that checks a submission for its technical aspects and alerts entrants whether if their submission is good or not. Furthermore, users are provided a 40 page detailed presentation guidelines with hints on how to make their presentation work. When the guidelines and submission optimization package is put together with the Preliminary Checking Service, the positive presentation bias is eliminated as most entries would have a very high level of presentation and communication. This is a further value to competition participants who would not be in a position to hire third party consultants to make professional submissions for them, the system also improves the press appearance potential of winners since better made design presentations are easier to get published. Learn more at: http://www.adesignaward.com/submissionoptimizer.php Design Mediation : This is a unique service that is offered to winner designers. The service helps award winners in cases when mediation and consultancy services are required for legal contracts. Designers are also provided template contracts for selling their designs on fixed terms or on royalty basis. In addition design mediators can act as a mediator between the buyer company and the design seller to help ease the process when necessary. A’ Design Award &amp; Competition is the first international design award that have implemented Design Mediation services to winners. The Design Mediation is also implemented as a module within the Design League platform. Design Mediation is a further value to participants who would not be able to afford either professional consultancy or mediation services when it comes to legal matters. Learn more at : http://www.designmediators.comPortfolio Evaluation and Screening : It has been seen that there exist several PR and consultancy companies that provide brands a service to participate in design awards. These services refer to choosing the best designs to submit, to make the presentation and follow-up the nomination processes. A’ Design Award already provides a way to make presentation better through the aforementioned free services. But still, companies wanted to make it easy, and consultants continue to offer these services as it makes economic profit to do so. In order to capture this economic benefit which could be redistributed to winners instead, A’ Design Award and Competition provides a direct service to all prospective participant brands called the Portfolio Evaluation and Screening Service. The service is highly affordable when compared to other consultancy agencies. Learn more at: http://adesignaward.com/portfolio-evaluation.htmlDesign PR Wire : Previously design awards and competitions expect a few international design awards did not do a good job when communicating the winners. For this reasons Design PR Wire was initially developed as a module within Design League platform allowing optimization of processes for preparation and distribution of press releases. This optimization process made it possible to publish several hundreds of unique press releases per year and news placements in thousands of publication. The Design PR Wire create added value for participants by greatly increasing the visibility and publicity of participants. Learn more at http://www.designprwire.comDesign Interviews : Every winner that has been given the A’ Design Award Accolade is provided with an interview. Award winners are asked for their responses regarding the most cliché yet again most common interview questions. The answers to these questions are distributed to press members and they are also published at the design-interviews.com for further accessibility. The interviews create a great value to award winners as they provide further publicity and visibility. In most cases, the Design Interviews are used by media editors as building blocks of their feature stories. For more information visit: http://www.design-interviews.comBuy Sell Design Network : This is a very unique value proposition that was especially created for award winning designers. They Buy Sell Design Network is part of the business networking and marketing services offered to A’ Design Award and Competition winners. The Buy Sell Design Network is composed of several sites that allows design buyers to meet design sellers. This is a further level of service for any winners who are actually joining design awards and competitions in order to increase and improve their business potentials. Learn more at : http://www.buyselldesign.comDesign Mega Store : The Design Mega Store has been imagined as a shopping mall for design where designers or producers of designer products can open stores and sell their shops to an open audience. The difference of Design Mega Store from other platforms is two folds: Firstly, unlike other platforms Design Mega Store does not take commission from sales. Second, unlike other platforms Design Mega Store does not require subscription fees for A’ Design Awards. Design Mega Store provides further value to winners by providing them a prestigious platform where they could sell their designs, design products and services. Learn more at : http://www.designmegastore.comSalone del Designer : The Salone Del Design platform has been built especially for award winning designers in mind. Using the integrated Design Mediator module within the Design League platform, designers can set sales terms or agreements regarding their projects. Salone del Designer is especially designed for sales of concept designs and offers a distinct value proposition when compared to the Design Mega Store platform. Salone del Designer platform provides further visibility to design award winners who wish to sell their concept designs. Learn more at : http://www.salonedeldesigner.comExhibitions : A’ Design Award &amp; Competition winners get exhibited in Italy, where the awards are organized. Each year a well-made design exhibition is prepared for winners; this exhibition features product submissions, realized works, prototypes as well as posters of concept designs, presentation of interior and architecture projects. Free posters preparation and free printing service are provided for all award winners who are not in a position to send a product or physical model. The exhibition provides a great value for award winners as first of all it is indeed a great prestige, and secondly it provides a further reach and publicity for winners. In addition to the award exhibition in Italy, A’ Design Award and Competition has been carrying the award winners exhibition to also other design events around the world, such as the Product Design Days in India. This provides a further layer of value to winners because this way winners’ products are not just exposed to design enthusiasts but also to the trade fair and design event participants. Learn more at : https://www.adesignaward.com/design-award-exhibition.htmlAward Scholarship : A’ Design Award &amp; Competition provides a unique opportunity for the highly talented young designers to join the competition without any costs and get all the benefits that international juried design competitions provide; to do so young designers are required to obtain a 9 or 10 score from the preliminary checks. Award Scholarship is unique to A’ Design Awards &amp; Competition; unlike other international design competitions, Award Scholarship recipients are not obliged to pay any fees to get any of the award benefits. The scholarship provides further prestige to the competition, and therefore to the accolade recipients. Learn more at : https://www.adesignaward.com/scholarship.phpDesign Ambassador Program : This program was introduced so that the talented design and arts students could get a chance to join the A’ Design Award and Competition for free, even if they were not able to obtain a preliminary score of 9 or 10. The Ambassador program is only for talented students who already have an approved design i.e. who had 6 or more in the preliminary checks. The program requires students to undertake certain tasks in exchange for up to 3 nomination tickets. One of the tasks is printing and sticking the poster of A’ Design Award &amp; Competition to their university bulletin board, resulting in one ticket free entry ticket. The program creates more value to all participants as it increase the spread of the award and therefore the importance. Learn more at : https://www.adesignaward.com/design-ambassador-program.phpDistinguished Designer Program : This is a unique program offered by A’ Design Award and Competitions where winners are assigned a level according to number of awards won and events participated. According to the level of DDP members, A’ Design Award &amp; Competition will commit more time and allocate more resources. It is also special membership card that grants owners discounts and benefits at third party businesses and institutions; such as discounted participations to trade-fairs, free space allocation in design magazines and others design related offers and deals. This provides a further value to participants as award winners are able to get discounts and extra benefits from selected solution partners. List of benefits are accessible from the control panel. Learn more at : http://www.adesignaward.com/distinguished-designer-program.phpGood Design Mark : Good Design Mark is a symbol on products &amp; product packages for a better designed world; Good Design Mark is awarded to products or services that meet a certain level of original design quality, which positively differentiates the awardees from commoditized offerings. The quality criteria are defined based on the form and function of the licensed product or service. If a product has good design mark, it means, the awarded design is considered a good design; it has a better, distinct form or function that aim to improve the customer satisfaction. There are four seals that are awarded to products and services. Good Design Mark for products that have original design and high intrinsic design value. Blue Design Mark for products and services that are socially responsible. Green Design Mark for products that are sustainable, ecological and environment friendly, and the Red Design Mark for highly energy efficient products. This is a further value for award winners, especially product developers so that they could use the good design mark on their products. Learn more at : http://www.gooddesignmark.comDesign Mag : Design Mag is an online showcase that displays award winning designs and projects in a beautiful way. This particular websites attracts a lot of attention from the design enthusiasts and is checked often for reference and inspiration. For each design, details such as inspiration, creativity, challenges and technology is discussed with images. Designs are linked to A’ Design Award profile pages where more information could be obtained or higher-resolution images could be accessed. Design Mag provides a great value as it leads to discoveries and encounters with designs from diverse disciplines. Learn more at : http://www.designmag.orgExerpt:Design League Platform : The first innovation was development of a very unique system and process management suite. The Design League Platform optimizes internal competition processes to make it easy and efficient to manage the competition. This allows a reduction in the organization costs, and therefore the ability for A’ Design Award &amp; Competition not to have further fees for winners. Design League Platform is powerful and has been used not only for making competitions or awards but also..